Mitch Arnowitz

Hallmark Cards, Research and Online Communities

December 31, 2004 by Mitch Arnowitz

Common Craft & Lee LeFever point to a MarketingSherpa article on Hallmark Cards Idea Exchange.

I was originally pointed to Common Craft by Jim Cachel after his company, Forum One, concluded one of it’s annual Online Community Summits and… I’ve been a reader ever since. Lee offers all kinds of value, helped me to understand RSS feeds and hey, even blogs about getting married.

Hearing about Hallmark communities took me back to an older AdMarketing conversation on How Marketers Use Interactive Tools. Many well known community builders participated in this conversation. The conversation actually kicks off here and many of the lessons learned are still relevant.

For this discussion, we engaged Communispace founder Diane Hessan. Communispace builds online communities for businesses and worked on the Idea Exchange initiative. More on Communispace’s work with Hallmark: Case Study: Hallmark.

Tsunami relief efforts

December 30, 2004 by Mitch Arnowitz

Scoble points to Apple as an example of good corporate citizenship. Other highly trafficed websites are turning homepages over to Tsunami relief efforts.

Bright Beginnings

December 29, 2004 by Mitch Arnowitz

As part of the Holiday, Jan/Elan/and I visited with Washington DC’s Bright Beginnings Program today. Executive Director Betty Jo Gaines explained that the center could use more resources (time & money). What a worthwhile place. The center offers a safe haven to 84 preschoolers that all come from really bad situations.

Here’s the link for more info. and to help.

Bright beginnings is a developmental child care center for homeless preschoolers whose families are in crisis shelters or transitional housing in Washington, DC.

The center offers free, full-day, year-round, and developmentally- appropriate care for approximately 100 children aged six weeks to five years old. As one of two child care centers in the District of Columbia that offers free care to homeless children, Bright Beginnings is alleviating a desperate community shortage.